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Transcript of Gig Posters
Timothy Vollmer SI 504 Section 9 Box 285 3648 Words
Gigposters
Collections live and thrive within social systems. At the same time, we’ve come to see
that collections cannot be understood of effectively managed without understanding the social
systems that create and use them.1 Collections help social systems remember by providing a
storage area for knowledge, which can facilitate clarification in a dispute by providing evidence.
Collections are inextricably linked to social systems and are built through social processes.
Collections use social systems to provide resources for preservation, disposition, repurposing,
and more resource gathering. Throughout our lectures and course materials, we’ve learned to
qualify a social system as an enduring group of people who interact regularly, create meanings,
establish hierarchies and roles, and rehearse norms. Social systems use collections in various
ways: as a tool for social memory, in collective sensemaking, to provide coordination and
control, and as a means to support social processes and institutions.
Gigposters.com (henceforth Gigposters) is a virtual collection of concert posters that
accepts submissions of digitized concert posters from designers and collectors. After being
approved, these posters are displayed online in Gigposters archive. As described on the site, “a
gig poster is an advertisement for a live musical performance … [including] flyers and handbills
… [but not] promotional, non-music related posters or posters for shows that did not happen.
There must be at least one musical performer listed on the poster.”2
Gigposters is the largest online collection of concert posters. To date there are
approximately 67,000 posters on the site, created by more than 5700 designers.3 Poster images
load quickly because the file size remains small (usually under 200kB). The Gigposters
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collection is accessible to users with Internet access and provides ways for viewers to browse or
search the collection. Viewers can browse Gigposters alphabetically by band or designer.
Viewers can also search by band, venue, city, or designer. A drawback of the search feature is
that viewers are not able to combine various search terms to return results. For example, a user
cannot enter “Sonic Youth” + “Budapest” in order to return results of posters containing Sonic
Youth shows in Budapest. Viewers may only search one field at a time.
Clay Hays, the current webmaster and sole administrator, created Gigposters in 2001. He
used Gigposters as an opportunity to demonstrate his skills as a web designer and learn more
about web development. Clay began uploading posters from his old bands and friends’ bands,
and Gigposters grew from there. While Gigposters gave Clay a platform for experimentation and
self-education, he is quick to point out that “the goal of the site in the beginning was to create a
community.”4 Today there are over 12,000 registered members on Gigposters.5 Gigposters in
now financially stable because of advertising and the introduction of paid premium member
accounts.
While the Gigposters website receives thousands of hits per day, occasional viewers do
not necessarily represent a part of the corresponding social system. Social systems rely on
members to provide resources such as knowledge or manpower. Social systems also assume
interaction and shared language, which may exclude casual viewers to the site. While we realize
that open accessibility to the wealth of the Gigposters collection is important, opt-in membership
to the site proves the most instructive example of the social system that lives within Gigposters.
Members create an account by choosing a username and password (which are validated through
an active e-mail account). Membership allows for more interactivity with the site, with the
collection, and with other members. Members can create profiles, display some personal
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information, and send private messages to other members. Gigposters incorporates a feature
which allows users to comment on individual posters and also provides a larger, more in-depth
discussion forum area where users can talk about other topics such as hot bands, upcoming art
shows, pertinent legal issues within the poster making community, and design technique. An
interesting category entitled “anything goes” contains over 900,000 posts!6 Recently, Gigposters
has introduced a “premium members” section in which member who pay a fee of $10 per year
can get access to expanded features on the site such as chat rooms, web cams, discounts on third-
party products, job postings and an online arcade.7
Gigposters audience includes designers, bands, and the general public of art-lovers and
music-lovers. Clay speculates that Gigposters user base is comprised of 50% designers, 25%
bands, and 25% general public. Immediately, the demographic of Gigposters members can tell us
much about its social system. We see that Gigposters relies heavily upon members of a social
system entrenched in art and design. This information helps us better analyze the embedded
values and priorities of the members of the social system
Throughout this paper, I will draw upon an interview conducted with Clay Hays, as well
as other information written by Clay that is displayed on the Gigposters website. I will also use
background information from conversations with friends who are poster makers. Gigposters is a
fascinating collection of concert posters that lives within an intertwined cycle of creation and
member interaction. At the onset, we will note that various forms of technology have come to
inform all aspects of our inquiry. We will keep these ideas in mind when analyzing the
Gigposters collection and the social system it affects and is affected by. First, we will look at
how analog-to-digital transformation adds value by increasing access to once-disparate
collections. Second, we’ll look into the phenomenon by which transformation builds markets and
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helps financially support creative communities. Third, we will try to understand how poster
collections aid in social memory. Next, we’ll analyze how Gigposters utilizes both centralized
and decentralized controls to maintain its collection. We’ll also look into the how collections that
promote efficient communication methods enrich a user’s experience. Finally, we’ll examine the
process by which communication allows users to uphold ideals of creative freedom, question
institutional policies, and resolve disputes when they arise.
Transformation adds value through aggregation
Thomassen writes, “to maintain a quality archive, we must maintain the relationship
between content data on the one hand and the form, structure and context of creation of these
data on the other.”8 The transformation and uploading of digitized posters creates value through
aggregation, creates new markets for poster sales, and allows users to exchange design ideas
online. History, context of creation and the original provenance are important factors to keep in
mind when analyzing the transformation of collections from the physical to the digital.
Gigposters combines previously disparate collections of posters into a massive archive
and helps bridge the gap of space and time. A supercollection is created where there was not one
before! The original purpose of a concert poster was to advertise a local music concert, to draw
persons who were knowledgeable of the surrounding neighborhood or city to a venue to see live
music. As a result, no large geographic collections materialized, and for good reason—a person
is more likely to attend local shows than those spread across the country and across the world, so
it makes sense that someone might collect posters from local shows. These posters are more
readily available and often free if taken from a kiosk or wall of a venue. Similarly, personal
physical poster collections most likely span only a limited amount of time. The Gigposters
collection draws posters from vastly different musical eras—it contains a poster from a Beatles
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show in Liverpool in 1963 as well as a poster from a TV on the Radio show in Detroit only a
weeks ago. Gigposters allows members to sift through thousands of posters showcasing concerts
spread throughout hundreds of cities and over decades of time. Clay writes, “the Internet has
allowed me to create a place where anyone can view gig posters from around the world. It’s the
only way.”9 Clay even admits that the size standards (600 by 800) are set solely because it
represents the size best displayed on web browsers.10
Moving collections online seems to encounter an obvious tradeoff—we lose quality but
gain viewing portability and easier access. This distinction misses the point of Gigposters, at
least for now. We see that the aim of Gigposters is not to provide a replacement for the original
work. Instead, it aims at opening historically distant communities to a wealth of creativity and
intimate knowledge of art, bands, and design that was nearly impossible to access before. The
history and provenance of poster making is steeped in a tradition of the physical—heavy paper
and quality ink. Gigposters does not try to solve the problem of the physical—the reproduction
of a poster on my 12” iBook screen does not do justice to an 18X24” four-color silkscreen
Modest Mouse concert poster. So, while the collection provides a gigantic wealth of beautiful
posters that are easy to access, we are constantly reminded of the original context of the poster’s
creation.
Transformation creates new markets
It’s interesting to see how Giposters facilitates a market for the purchasing of posters.
This market was not present before, save for a few poster makers who were actually able to
attend the shows for which the posters were created. This is an arduous process in itself, usually
requiring permission from the band, venue, and promoter in order to sell the posters. Gigposters
represents the springboard from which collecting and buying can bloom. It creates markets that
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were not present before. Clay writes, “I don't think posters were sold near[ly] as much before the
site came around. I think [Gigposters] has opened up the art form, collectiblity, and has resulted
in more people selling posters in many different ways.”11 The posters, once a functional artifact,
help fuel an economic market rooted in nostalgia. The Internet, and Gigposters in particular, has
brought existing collectors together and created new collectors, who have been exposed to vast
knowledge of new posters (and their corresponding designer websites, who often sell them)
through the Gigposters site. “Most people go and buy posters after viewing them on Gigposters,”
claims Clay.12
Transformation aids social memory
Radley discusses the collecting, sorting, and presentation of objects that social systems
deem worthwhile for remembering:
The status of objects as things for remembering is a matter of social definition, framing
some artifacts (through displacement) as mementos, some as of historic interest and
others so that they remain merely functional. This marking of objects as being worthy of
attention for remembering … can be illustrated by the discovery of an old heirloom in the
attic which is brought into the living room … There is here a definite invitation to attend
to these objects in a special way, to allow [emphasis his] the interests and attitudes which
they evoke to be revived through the elaboration of meanings made possible by talking
with others about them.13
“Gigposters is an historical archive,” says Clay.14 The aggregation of posters on the site helps us
remember, in a very literal way, a musical history of our time. We realize that the representation
of music and design history on Gigposters is never all-inclusive, but still remains useful in our
analysis.
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While individual posters are beautiful and provide useful information and entertainment
in a standalone context, Gigposters begs for user participation to share experiences, rebuild
histories, and further social memory. Through discussion on the forums and poster comments
pages, Gigposters can help us remember these narratives. Members can provide comments that
can provide the necessary background, nostalgic ruminations and stories that can help describe a
music scene at a particular time—in a sense, a journalistic snapshot of a social scene at its height.
Imagine what it would it be like to hear a personal account describing of one of Nirvana’s first
shows in the Pacific Northwest in 1987. Concert posters have the ability to trigger this kind of
emotion and urges members to discuss and share stories. This sharing of history with such a
large and diverse audience would have been impossible before.
Considering the more technical realm of design, the aggregation of poster collections on
Gigposters helps members document and track various movements in art and design. Gigposters
design forums can help open containers of specialized knowledge wrapped up within the poster
design community. Designers are able to receive feedback on their work from members the
might not have interacted with before. Artists and musicians are able to study and discuss trends
in art, design, and interact with the creators of the art. The use of the Gigposters collection as a
tool for sustaining musical histories and documenting design trends represents a very pure way
of utilizing artifacts to sustain memory over time. Infinite value is added when these
communities interact.
Coordination and Control
Beniger shows us that control arises in the intersection of information processing and
reciprocal communication: “Two-way interaction between controller and controlled must also
occur, not only to communicate influence from the former to the latter, but also to communicate
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back the results of this action.”15 This feedback is necessary in order to maintain and further
control in a meaningful way.
Gigposters represents an interesting interplay of control and feedback that is distributed
between the webmaster (Clay) and Gigposters members. Since Clay is the one person who
approves posters to be uploaded to the Gigposters site, it appears that the control mechanism is
fairly straightforward. Clay manually looks at each poster submission sent to the website to make
sure that it contains the proper technical attributes (live show, name of band, file type and size).16
Since Clay is the only person involved in approving posters, we wonder what would happen to
the collection if he were unable to continue.
In addition to following technical standards, Clay asks that members refrain from
submitting duplicate posters, and also urges uploaders to read the “Terms of Use” page in order
to make sure the proposed poster follows the “Permitted Uses” and does not contain prohibited
content.17 Clay respects artistic freedom and does not discriminate posters based on quality—“if
it's up on the street to advertise a music show, it deserves to be on the Gigposters site.”18 At the
same time, Clay admits that he has to moderate the forum sections all the time in order to rid it of
spam, advertising and inappropriate entries.19
Collectors as well as designers may upload posters to the site. Deregulation allows for
more posters to be uploaded and shared, as is the case when collectors add old posters from
which we no longer know the creator. Increased exposure may allow the poster’s creator to
eventually be identified.
While Clay plays an important role as gatekeeper to Gigposters, we also recognize that
members play an integral part in managing the site’s collection. Members add a layer of control
to this seemingly simplistic hierarchy by representing the “eyes” of Gigposters. Clay says, “I
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manually approve every poster. If I screw up ... people let me know.”20 Modeling this under the
open-source model of “many eyeballs,” users provide a layer of control to Gigposters in
identifying technical problems (corrupted poster display) as well as flagging duplicates,
copyright issues, or inappropriate content. This is similar to the “flag this video” button present
in sites like YouTube, except that on the Gigposters site, users must email Clay directly with
issues or complaints. This avenue for feedback and user control provides an extremely useful
tool for control of the collection. Members function as the “neighborhood watch” of the
Gigposters community.
Sensemaking
The Gigposters collection opens up access to a gigantic virtual poster collection and gives
members the opportunity for interaction and communication. Users must engage in sensemaking
when they spot something out of the ordinary.
In 2003, a Gigposters member and designer named Delicious posted a silk-screened
poster for a Gossip concert in Chicago. The poster depicted a cartoonish, stereotypical “mammy”
character, an “Aunt Jemima” figure. The poster fit the submission guidelines and therefore went
up on the Gigposters site. Immediately, the poster started generating member comments such as
“I imagine this will get some attention” and “I’d like to know the motivation behind this one.”21
Many thought that the poster was racist (the band actually refused to play the show until the
posters were removed from the club). Others thought the poster was a brave statement of artistic
freedom. Still others chose to only critique the poster’s design elements. Everyone seemed to
have something to say about the Gossip poster—to date 245 comments have been left on the
page.
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Clay remembered the issue when put to him, and stated that the poster is still on the site
and has not been removed at any time. The ubiquity of Gigposters within the poster making
community reduces the fallacy of centrality described by Weick—the idea that if a person
doesn’t know about a situation, then it must not be happening.22 Everyone knew about the
controversial Gossip poster because it was so easily accessible online, whereas before, probably
only a few kids in Chicago would have actually seen the poster in the first place. Gigposters has
made information retrieval so efficient that we are unable to ignore it when outliers appear on
our radar screen. At the same time, we should realize that this increased access to information
should come coupled with an increased responsibility for analysis, public discussion, and
sensemaking.
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Weick says, “sensemaking is understood as a process that is grounded in identity
construction, retrospective, enactive of sensible environments, social, ongoing, focused on and
by extracted cues, and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.”23 The conflict and cognitive
dissonance brought about by the Gossip poster incident shows how Gigposters members attempt
to true their ideals of artistic freedom with personal and community integrity: Members aim for
sensemaking by maintaining standards supported by a common identity. Members look at other
posters to see whether a similar issue has arisen before. Members build and sustain the collection
in a continual cycle of social interaction. Members utilize design cues and text to praise or
critique other’s work. Members search for an eventual answer.
The really interesting part of sensemaking concerning the Gossip poster occurs at the
intersection of creative freedom, published regulations (terms of use agreement), and members’
values and ethics. Designers wish to protect artistic freedom while the site tries to maintain
standards that attempt to prohibit content that is “patently offensive to the online community …
promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual”24
At the same time, the member community does not wish to be considered racist if they allow
controversial content like the Gossip poster to remain in Gigposter’s collection.
Clay says that the terms of agreement came from a generic form that is typical of many
websites like Gigposters, and that the terms of use provisions have not changed since the site was
created.25 Clay also proudly states that he does not delete any posters based on the content
therein—he claims that artists are provided with 100% creative freedom. Clay is very flexible
concerning poster submissions—all are considered art.26 Taking into consideration the outcry
from many members, who denounced the seemingly racist depiction on the Gossip poster, it’s
interesting to see how sensemaking is achieved through communication.
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Members build and maintain identity on Gigposters—they realize that the environment
they occupy on Gigposters is one that comes preloaded with a culture that adheres to certain
principles and defends some viewpoints more strongly than others. We also realize that
sensemaking is a social and ongoing process that reflects the time and culture—while we might
tolerate pornographic images (itself a violation of the site’s terms of use); we feel more internal
and community conflict when affronted with racist imagery.
By raising our concerns with others within the community, we can help resolve this
conflict. Weick says, “[the] social context is crucial for sensemaking because it binds people to
actions that they then must justify.”27 Delicious initially refused to comment on his poster, but
after members posted increasingly critical comments about his irresponsibility, he eventually
began to explain his motivations and ideas for using this particular imagery. The users of
Gigposters were creating sense by urging the author to speak. This process of accountability in
being able to justify choice and action is an important process of understanding for the health of
the social system and the robustness of the collection. We see that it is equally important for us
to keep records of these discussions and issues, which allows us to revisit them later and
provides a tangible example for later sensemaking. We constantly revisit, reexamine, and rewrite
our history and story as new people discover the poster. While the deluge of comments on the
Gossip poster came within about the first two months, the most recent was posted just this year.
Onward
We have seen that the transformation of collections from the analog to the digital opens
doors to access once constrained by geography and time. We’ve also discovered that the
aggregation of collections can result in the creation of novel markets. Furthermore, consolidation
of disparate collections into a central site shares histories and sustains memory of design
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processes. We’ve realized that virtual collections require resources and control techniques that
can be both individual and social. Finally, we’ve learned that we through regular communication,
we can make sense online.
Over all of this, we have remained cognizant of the technological innovation that affects
each aspect of this collection and its corresponding social system. Brown and Duguid write, “by
engaging the social context in which technologies are embedded, better designs and uses will
emerge.”28 Technological innovations are happening faster and more easily than ever before.
While technology can provide answers to many problems, we need to be able to step back and
analyze these progressions with an ever-vigilant eye. We are challenged to “look around”29—to
remain open-minded in our thinking about these dynamic concepts as we encounter new
technological and social environments.
1 504 lecture, week 2 2 Clay Hays, “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/submit.php> 3 Clay Hays, “Home Page.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/> 4 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 5 Clay Hays, “Forums.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/forums/> 6 Clay Hays, “Forums.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/forums/> 7 Clay Hays, “Premium Members.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/chat.php> 8 Theo Thomassen, Archival Science 1, no. 4 p. 383 9 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 10 ibid. 11 ibid. 12 ibid. 13 Alan Radley, Collective Remembering (Inquiries in Social Construction), p. 56 14 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 15 James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, p. 8
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16 Clay Hays, “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/submit.php> 17 Clay Hays, “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/terms.php/> 18 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 19 ibid. 20 ibid. 21 “The Gossip” poster comments. Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. 22 Karl Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, p. 2 23 Weick, at 17. 24 Clay Hays, “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/terms.php/> 25 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 26 ibid. 27 Weick, at 53. 28 John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, p. x. 29 Brown and Duguid, at xxiv.
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Works Cited
Beniger, James. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the
Information Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), “Introduction,” pp. 1-27.
Email communication between Clay Hays and Timothy Vollmer, November 18, 2006. Hays, Clay. “Forums.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006.
<http://www.gigposters.com/forums/> Hays, Clay. “Home Page.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/> Hays, Clay. “Premium Members.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/chat.php> Hays, Clay. “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/submit.php> Hays, Clay. “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/terms.php/> Radley, Alan. “Artefacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past,” Collective Remembering (Inquires
in Social Construction), David Middleton and Derek Edwards, eds. (London: Sage, 1990), pp. 46-59.
Seely Brown, John and Paul Duguid. “Introduction,” The Social Life of Information (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000): ix – xxv. Thomassen, Theo. “A First Introduction to Archival Science,” Archival Science 1, no. 4 (2001):
373-385. Weick, Karl. Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 1995), Chapter 1, “Nature of Sense-Making,” and 2, “Seven Properties of Sense-Making,” pp. 1-62.